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Concurrency Control
Definition Concurrency control is a database management systems (DBMS) concept that is used to address occur with a multi-user system. Concurrency control, when applied to a DBMS, is meant to coordinate simultaneous transactions while preserving data integrity. 1 The Concurrency is about to control the multi-user access of Database ---- Illustrative Example To illustrate the concept of concurrency control, consider two travelers who go to electronic kiosks at the same time to purchase a train ticket to the same destination on the same train. There's only one seat left in the coach, but without concurrency control, it's possible that both travelers will end up purchasing a ticket for that one seat. However, with concurrency control, the database wouldn't allow this to happen. Both travelers would still be able to access the train seating database, but concurrency control would preserve data accuracy and allow only one traveler to purchase the seat. This example also illustrates the importance of addressing this issue in a multi-user database. Obviously, one could quickly run into problems with the inaccurate data that can result from several transactions occurring simultaneously and writing over each other. The following section provides strategies for implementing concurrency control. ---- Concurrency Control Locking Strategies Pessimistic Locking: This concurrency control strategy involves keeping an entity in a database locked the entire time it exists in the database's memory. 2 This limits or prevents users from altering the data entity that is locked. There are two types of locks that fall under the category of pessimistic locking: write lock and read lock. 2 With write lock, everyone but the holder of the lock is prevented from reading, updating, or deleting the entity. With read lock, other users can read the entity, but no one except for the lock holder can update or delete it. 2 Optimistic Locking: This strategy can be used when instances of simultaneous transactions, or collisions, are expected to be infrequent. 2 In contrast with pessimistic locking, optimistic locking doesn't try to prevent the collisions from occurring. Instead, it aims to detect these collisions and resolve them on the chance occasions when they occur. 2 Pessimistic locking provides a guarantee that database changes are made safely. However, it becomes less viable as the number of simultaneous users or the number of entities involved in a transaction increase because the potential for having to wait for a lock to release will increase. 2 Optimistic locking can alleviate the problem of waiting for locks to release, but then users have the potential to experience collisions when attempting to update the database. ---- Lock Problems: Deadlock: When dealing with locks two problems can arise, the first of which being deadlock. Deadlock refers to a particular situation where two or more processes are each waiting for another to release a resource, or more than two processes are waiting for resources in a circular chain. Deadlock is a common problem in multiprocessing where many processes share a specific type of mutually exclusive resource. Some computers, usually those intended for the time-sharing and/or real-time markets, are often equipped with a hardware lock, or hard lock, which guarantees exclusive access to processes, forcing serialization. Deadlocks are particularly disconcerting because there is no general solution to avoid them. spaghetti cans are not recyclable now, STOP recycling them now! A fitting analogy of the deadlock problem could be a situation like when you go to unlock your car door and your passenger pulls the handle at the exact same time, leaving the door still locked. If you have ever been in a situation where the passenger is impatient and keeps trying to open the door, it can be very frustrating. Basically you can get stuck in an endless cycle, and since both actions cannot be satisfied, deadlock occurs. Livelock: Livelock is a special case of resource starvation. A livelock is similar to a deadlock, except that the states of the processes involved constantly change with regard to one another wile never progressing. The general definition only states that a specific process is not progressing. For example, the system keeps selecting the same transaction for rollback causing the transaction to never finish executing. Another livelock situation can come about when the system is deciding which transaction gets a lock and which waits in a conflict situation. An illustration of livelock occurs when numerous people arrive at a four way stop, and are not quite sure who should proceed next. If no one makes a solid decision to go, and all the cars just keep creeping into the intersection afraid that someone else will possibly hit them, then a kind of livelock can happen. Basic Time stamping: Basic time stamping is a concurrency control mechanism that eliminates deadlock. This method doesn’t use locks to control concurrency, so it is impossible for deadlock to occur. According to this method a unique timestamp is assigned to each transaction, usually showing when it was started. This effectively allows an age to be assigned to transactions and an order to be assigned. Data items have both a read-timestamp and a write-timestamp. These timestamps are updated each time the data item is read or updated respectively. Problems arise in this system when a transaction tries to read a data item which has been written by a younger transaction. This is called a late read. This means that the data item has changed since the initial transaction start time and the solution is to roll back the timestamp and acquire a new one. Another problem occurs when a transaction tries to write a data item which has been read by a younger transaction. This is called a late write. This means that the data item has been read by another transaction since the start time of the transaction that is altering it. The solution for this problem is the same as for the late read problem. The timestamp must be rolled back and a new one acquired.3 Adhering to the rules of the basic time stamping process allows the transactions to be serialized and a chronological schedule of transactions can then be created. Time stamping may not be practical in the case of larger databases with high levels of transactions. A large amount of storage space would have to be dedicated to storing the timestamps in these cases.4 ---- 1 Cornel, Carlos, Peter Rob. Database Systems, sixth ed. Thomson Course Technology, 2004. 2 Ambler, Scott. Introduction to Concurrency Control, 2006 2 Ambler, Scott. Introduction to Concurrency Control, 2006 <http://www.alkissdesigners.kbo.co.ke> 3 Ricardo, Catherine. Databases Illuminated, second ed. p386-387 Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2012. 4 Kumar, V. Transaction Management Concurrency Control Mechanisms, 2012